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Pilfering Apples

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The Kings and Queens Are Met, Ah Bah

An Ongoing Effort to Index This Blog

You’re probably here for reference material! Here’s a tag list to hopefully make finding that easier!

Before I get into the tag lists, a note on my Editorial Policy, such as it is:  I truly appreciate corrections, warnings about bloggers/writers operating in bad faith, etc! But if you’re contacting me with actionable info please come off anon or leave me some other way to get hold of you, so I can follow up if I need more info! I don’t post or reblog incorrect or hateful material on purpose, which means if I missed something I probably need more information!  I’m happy to keep a convo private if asked, I just need to be able to verify my sources. 

That out of the way! The tags!

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This review from 1987 is too funny and I love that he calls Valjean the student’s uncle but also, it’s too optimistic about American politics lol. 

Save your McGovern buttons, folks; liberalism shall rise again. And soon. You can feel it. It’s not merely that the air is going out of Ronald Reagan’s balloon, it’s that the times they are achangin’. Many liberals these days don’t even bother with a secret handshake when greeting each other. Others have taken to openly advocating such controversial liberal ideas as public education, clean water and help for the homeless. You think I’m rushing it, don’t you? Well, perhaps, but you’ll have to forgive me. I’ve just seen “Les Miserables." 
Perhaps you haven’t heard about it yet? You will. "Les Miz,” as we on the fast track call it, is the latest stage phenomenon to hit this country. It is a grandiose musical  — really more of an opera —  based on Victor Hugo’s novel. Like the last such phenomenon, “Nicholas Nickleby,” it comes from London, and like “NickNick” (fast track again), it is going to be a smash hit. It is a genuine, hand-tooled, gold-leafed, can’t-miss, must-see show. 
Overlooked in the hoopla of a hit, however, is the fact that it, again like “Nickleby,” is a liberal show. Its story is the triumph of bleeding heart liberalism over hard-hearted conservatism. And people are going crazy for it. 
“Rambo” is out; “Les Miz” and “Nick-Nick” are in. 
“Les Miz” is the story of a poor Frenchman during Napoleanic [sic] times who steals a loaf of bread to feed his sister’s starving child (which is, basically, the only reason liberals ever steal). He is caught and given 19 years in prison. Released from jail, Valjean is unable to get work because of his prison record, so he breaks parole and assumes a new identity. He is a great success in business and becomes mayor of a small town. 
Valjean is pursued through the years by a cop, Javert, who wears black clothes and smiles only when he steps on a butterfly. 
Javert keeps rediscovering Valjean and trying to arrest him, but the ex-con is too smart for him; he keeps slipping away. In the meantime, Valjean helps any widows and orphans he finds in his path. He is a sweetheart of a guy.
But does this cut any ice with Javert? Not a cube. He’s determined that Valjean pay the price for breaking parole. He reminds one of Chief Justice William Rehnquist, actually. (If Valjean had been arrested for income tax evasion instead of stealing bread, they’d have probably let him off with a warning.) 
Finally, or almost finally, Javert is captured by idealistic rebels during a student uprising and is delivered into the hands of Valjean, who is being a sort of uncle to the students. Javert, naturally, expects to be shot. Instead, Valjean does the liberal thing; he lets him go. Javert later has a chance to return the favor and does, but he feels so unhappy at having violated the conservative code of honor by helping a liberal that he commits suicide.
Anvway, it all ends happily. Valiean dies, but he goes to heaven, where all good liberals go. Javert is conspicuous by his absence.
It is a great snow, the night I saw it at the Kennedy Center, Washington’s liberals clapped so hard I thought their jewelry was going to fly off. 
The production is a return to the drama of the late 19th and early 20th century, before movies, when one of the things you went to the theater for was spectacle, crowd scenes, chariot races, waterfalls. The effects in “Les Miz” are magnificent. A pitched street battle with students and troops is reproduced on stage, then within moments we are in a Paris sewer with the escaping Valjean. The next minute we stay with Javert as he jumps from a bridge and plunges to his death.
As I said, it’s a great show and a harbinger of things to come. You still don’t believe me? Listen: in his current film, Sylvester Stallone plays an arm-wrestler. Conservatism is being downsized. In his next film he’ll probably play a social worker.
Remember, you read it here first. 

Journal des Dames et des Modes, 15 March 1832: Redingote à brandebourgs.

The brandebourgs are the ornamental loop-fastenings on the gentleman's coat, often used with frog-buttons. The Dictionary of Fashion History by Valerie Cumming defines brandenbourgs/brandenburgs as "trimming of transverse cording and tassel in the military style used on clothing of both genders."

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